A bitstream compliant with the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) Moving Picture Experts Group-4 (MPEG-4) Part 10 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard/International Telecommunication Union, Telecommunication Sector (ITU-T) H.264 recommendation (hereinafter the “MPEG-4 AVC standard”) or an extension thereof such as, for example, scalable video coding (SVC) and multi-view video coding (MVC) includes Network Abstraction View (NAL) units. A NAL unit is an atomic element that can be framed for transport and parsed independently. NAL units can be categorized with respect to Video Coding View (VCL) NAL units and non-VCL NAL units. VCL NAL units include syntax elements representing one or more coded macroblocks, each of which corresponding to a block of samples in the uncompressed picture. A non-VCL NAL unit may be of one of the following types: a sequence parameter set (and its extension), a picture parameter set, a supplemental enhancement information (SEI) NAL unit, and so forth. A supplemental enhancement information NAL unit includes one or more supplemental enhancement information messages, which are not required for the decoding of output pictures but assist in related processes such as picture output timing, rendering, error detection, error concealment, resource reservation, and so forth. Although that information can be acquired by analyzing the original bitstream, supplemental enhancement information messages can be used to provide all the required information without actually decoding the bitstream. The system component can directly access the information and this makes the system-level operation much easier.
Up to now, 22 types of supplemental enhancement information messages are specified in the MPEG-4 AVC Standard and 7 additional types of supplemental enhancement information messages are specified in the scalable video coding (SVC) extension of the MPEG-4 AVC Standard. Since the multi-view video coding (MVC) extension of the MPEG-4 AVC Standard is new, there are no supplemental enhancement information messages relating thereto that provide any necessary or desired multi-view video coding information.